Can we help people, help others, in order to help themselves?
The definition of social anxiety is “fear of being judged by others,” so avoiding social interactions is a natural behaviour for those affected. Therefore it might seem counterintuitive to build an interaction tool for people fearing interaction itself!
Earlier this year we launched Steps. Steps is an app helping people battle social anxiety using principles from exposure therapy.
We are in the process of making Steps even better. More exactly we want to build a way for our users to interact and help each other complete challenges.
Brain power
When we give advice and help others we get a mental feel-good reward.
Also, we all know that giving advice is much easier than acting on that same good advices ourself. Seeing a situation from someone else’s point of view makes the situation less complicated, less intimidating or frightening. The good thing is our brains will remember the advice we keep giving and eventually start acting on it.
This brain mechanism can become very handy in Steps. When users share the same fear, and a user helps another cope with a future situation, the advice given will eventually help the helper rewire his or her thought patterns.
“There’s nothing you can’t do if you get the habits right … The truth is, the brain can be reprogrammed. You just have to be deliberate about it”
These mechanisms is also what makes group therapy work so well.
The positive effect has been well proven in settings where people sharing similar issues share advice on how they deal with the issues at hand.
Our question became; Can we help people, help others, in order to help themselves?
Over the summer we conducted experiments to understand whether the positive benefits of sharing advises can work for us. Interaction that works in a physical, clinical setting, might not work in a digital and on the contrary there are opportunities in the digital world, that does not exist in the physical.
What we have seen is that even though our users fear social interactions, they are masters in helping others deal with them. They give the most beautiful, heartfelt advice, mood lifting reflections and motivation for doing challenges.
A second learning is that it makes sense for users to be both a helper and receive help. So though we still have a lot to discover, the question of whether a person with social anxiety can be an excellent helper for another with social anxiety, is undeniable true.
Our question is now; How can we help people help others in order help themselves?
Many experiments lies ahead to create effective tools that give people a good interaction experience when using Steps.
To be continued..
